


The Footman, the Butler and the Bad Winter Fairy

by flippyspoon



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Christmas, Fairy Tale Style, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-21
Updated: 2013-11-21
Packaged: 2018-01-02 05:40:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1053145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flippyspoon/pseuds/flippyspoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Christmas fairy tale for Thomas and Jimmy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Footman, the Butler and the Bad Winter Fairy

Once upon a time there was a bad fairy named Freest who found himself lost in a Yorkshire wood.  Freest was a winter fairy and very mischievous.  His favorite kind of mischief was turning hearts to ice- oh, it was such a wonderful feeling to see a person’s whole body freeze over from their heart outwards!  Freest could dance on a magically frozen corpse for days.  But you had to find the right kind of heart to turn to ice; it had to have love inside it, but love abandoned and shunned.  For a heart with attentive love burned hot and melted the ice straight away.

Freest had been wandering the Yorkshire wood for days without finding the right sort of heart, and he was starved for a good show.  Then one day-Christmas Eve it was- as silent flurries of snow fell, Freest saw his chance.  Two men walked beside each other through the wood; their breath in puffs as they spoke about meaningless things.  A grey rabbit hopping between the trees saw Freest watching the two men, and she thumped a warning, but the men ignored her.  That was the trouble with humans-they never paid attention.

On first glance, if you were a stupid fairy who didn’t know any better, you might have thought that the man with hard eyes, porcelain skin, and a careful mouth, was the icy one.  He certainly seemed as cold as the wintry air.  But Freest could feel the fire of the man’s heart; his love burned hot.  It  was well tended.  No, he loved few, but when he did love, he loved passionately, and his heart would never turn to ice. But the other man with golden hair and glittering eyes and sun-kissed skin; his heart was dark with love hidden away and shut up in shadows.  Freest spun on his toes and turned a cartwheel upon a pine branch, he was so happy.  His twitched his long pointed nose, spread his wings, and flew after the men.

The golden man was a footman named Jimmy Kent and his hard-eyed friend was an under butler named Thomas Barrow.  They came from a sort of castle called Downton Abbey.  Thomas and Jimmy were talking about films as they walked through the snowy wood on their way home from the village.  Jimmy could hold the conversation without thinking much about it, or feeling much about it.  Jimmy hadn’t felt much of anything at all since Mr. Barrow had told him he was leaving Downton Abbey for America.  He was neither happy nor sad nor angry.  It was a thing that would happen, and Jimmy would do nothing to stop it.  The world was a mean place that Jimmy feared, and the best one could do was distract oneself from time to time with liquor or dancing.  Thomas would go to America and Jimmy suspected there was a man there who Thomas might love, and that was fine.  It was better after all.  Jimmy would do his job everyday, or maybe someday he would get a chance to do something more fun.  Eventually he would grow old alone and die. And if he felt desolate inside, well that was life.  One had to get by, and when a person was as afraid of something as Jimmy was, there was usually a very good reason.  So Jimmy listened closely to fear.

“Are you listening?”  Mr. Barrow said.

“Hmm?  Yes.  I liked  _Camille_  too,” Jimmy said. They were quiet for a moment, and Jimmy heard only the surrounding hush of snow and Mr. Barrow’s breathing.  He said easily, “Only two weeks to go, Mr. Barrow.  You must be excited.”

“I am, I won’t deny it,” Thomas said, and he stopped for a moment in the snow, smiling to himself.  But catching Jimmy’s eye, he said, “If I were you, I’d leave Downton, while I was still young.  Times are different now.  You might make a go of it in London.”

Jimmy stared at the baron branches of a black tree.  “I might do,” he said.  “Someday.”

“If I hear of a good opportunity, you know, I’ll write you,”   Thomas said.  Jimmy could not fail to hear the faint note of hope in his voice- the foolish man.  He only nodded in response.  Thomas would write him and the letters would become fewer and fewer, until one day he would not write at all, and Jimmy would die alone.  Jimmy took a step, and feeling a sudden chill in his chest-though he was wearing a warm coat-he shivered.  They walked on and did not see the cackling fairy flitting from tree to tree behind them.  A chill hit Jimmy again, as if someone had spilled cold water inside his chest.  He gasped and clutched his heart.

“Ah!  Ah, cold!”  He stopped in his tracks, and the terrible chill spread throughout his whole body.

“Jimmy, what’s the matter?” Thomas said.

“Oh…God, my heart…”  Jimmy stumbled back a step and looked at Thomas, his eyes wide and frightened.  “Thomas!  Thomas, help me!”  He fell back against a tree and slid down into the snow, clawing at his shirt, as if he could tear out the cold feeling.

“Jimmy!”  Thomas knelt down beside him.  “What- what is it?  A heart attack?”

“N-n-no,” Jimmy stuttered, and he shook violently, his teeth chattering.  “I-i-t’sss c-c-cold! S-s-so cold!”

Jimmy was deadly pale.  Thomas muttered, “Uh, frostbite or…or hypothermia.  We’ll get you inside…”  He tried to lift Jimmy up to carry him back to Downton, but he was too heavy.  Thomas knew he would never make it all the way across the estate, but he tried anyway,  trudging a few steps with Jimmy in his arms before collapsing to the ground.

Jimmy was going still and stiff, and his eyes became opaque.  Thomas watched in horror as his usually warm skin turned blue with frost; the veins in his face visible and grey.  “M-m-my h-h-heart issss…”

Thomas himself had begun to tremble in fear, and he opened Jimmy’s coat and jacket and unbuttoned his shirt.  The skin of Jimmy’s chest had turned completely to ice and Thomas only stared at it, unbelieving.

“What…what is this?”  Thomas said.

“T-T-Thomas, I-I’m d-d-dying,” Jimmy said, and he knew it was true.  He felt the creeping specter of death as surely as he had known before that he was alive and that he loved Thomas dreadfully.  And just as surely, he knew now that he had been a fool.  There was only one thing certain in life and that was death.  What was more foolish than letting fear stop you from loving a person who loved you back, even if everyone said your love was wrong?  Now he saw how small he was in the scope of the world; how little it would have mattered in the grand scheme of things if he had only told Thomas that he loved him, if he had only kissed him once.  No, not once, a thousand times.  A hundred thousand times.  But now it was too late- he felt life leaving him already.  Now Jimmy wept, but his tears froze as they left his eyes and became little icicles on his cheeks.

“You’re not dying, you’re not,” Thomas said fiercely, and he knelt there in the snow, cradling Jimmy.  He took Jimmy’s gloves off to rub warmth into his hands, for lack of anything else to do, but Jimmy’s fingers were frozen and likely to snap right off.

“I-I-I am…d-d-dying…” Jimmy wheezed.

Thomas began to cry then, as he held his love in his arms.  “No.  No, no, don’t…Please…  Jimmy, what do I do?  I don’t know what to do.  I love you, I love you,  _please_ …”

“I-I’m…s-s-sorry…” Jimmy said.  Thomas sobbed and held him tight.  Jimmy’s breath was shallow and ragged and Thomas knew that he was going to die.

“What do I do!”  Thomas cried, and Jimmy’s body had become as hard as stone so that Thomas couldn’t hold him properly.  “Please, love, please!  What do I do!”

“K-k-kiss m-m-me,”  Jimmy said.  Then Jimmy’s lips were still because they had become as icy as his heart.  So Thomas pressed his mouth to Jimmy’s, and felt no warmth or give at all.  He bowed his head to Jimmy’s frozen body and wept as he had never wept in his life.

Jimmy felt his last breath leaving him and thought of all the times he had seen Thomas smiling at him across the servants’ hall table and thought, _I love him_ , and all the times he had caught Thomas’s eye while serving dinner and thought,  _I love him_ , and all the card games and shared jokes and smiles and cigarettes that meant:  _I love him, I love him, I love him_.  He thought of how he had shoved it down, down, down into a bit of coal at the bottom of his heart; hidden away and shut up in shadows.

But the fire of Thomas’s love was burning hotter than it had ever burned before.  As he held Jimmy, his love burned so brightly that it made his tears boil as they left his eyes and fell to Jimmy’s body, and they began to melt his frozen heart.  Thomas kept weeping, and as he had a particular talent for tears, they flowed like a river over Jimmy’s icy body, and when the hot tears met his chill, steam rose around the two men.  But Thomas was too distraught to see what his sorrow was doing to Jimmy, and he continued to cry and rocked Jimmy back and forth, and said that he loved him, he loved him, he would always love him.  Jimmy was still unmoving and Thomas pressed one last kiss to his still cold lips, and his hot tears burned his cheeks as they fell to Jimmy’s mouth and made it warm and soft again.  Thomas’s tears had bathed him; the hard little coal of love in his heart was burning red hot and catching fire within him, and he was able to move his arms so that they wrapped around Thomas, and his lips were able to move against Thomas’s lips, and his tongue was able to feel Thomas’s tongue.

Thomas came to his senses and leaned back, holding Jimmy’s face in his hands.  Jimmy’s white eyes were blue again, and his cheeks were warm and pink.  “Jimmy!”  Thomas could think of no other word, but only pressed his palms to Jimmy’s face.  “Jimmy, what-”

“Thomas, I’m sorry!”  Jimmy said, and he sat up and clutched Thomas’s shoulders.  “I’m sorry! I love you!  Please don’t go!  Or take me with you!  Don’t leave me, please don’t!  I can’t bear it! I love you always!  I can’t bear to be without you!”  He kissed Thomas again and held him tight, and his own tears burned them a little and made them so warm that they took off each other’s coats and jackets and shirts and trousers and shoes and pants and pressed kisses to each other’s bodies.

“I love you too,” Thomas said.  “I love you always.”

By this time, Freest the bad winter fairy had vanished, grumbling to himself about how love was such a troublesome thing.  And meanwhile, Thomas and Jimmy’s hearts burned so firey with love, that the snow and ice thawed around them.  Thomas pressed into Jimmy again and again, and kissed his warm heart over and over, and even snow that fell melted into mist, and the ground under them had thawed to mud, and the icicles on the trees drip-dropped warm water that turned to steam when it fell to Thomas’s back.  Even the air around them became warm, so that the woodland animals who kept to their woodland nooks in winter poked their noses out, and the good spring fairies alighted on pine branches and were so delighted by the sight of the two men who loved each other that they made grass grow beneath them, and made the leaves grow on the trees around them.  The fairies made hedges grow between the trees so no one would bother them, and made the birds sing and chirp so no one would hear them, and made the flowers grow everywhere, even flowers that had never grown in the wood before, so that bushes of red roses pushed out of the ground, and cherry blossoms drifted on a sweet breeze around them, and morning glories climbed the hedges as Thomas and Jimmy loved each other naked in the grass, and even years later after Thomas and Jimmy had lived in America a long time, everyone still wondered how one patch of the Downton estate had suddenly turned to a beautiful spring day on Christmas Eve.

**Author's Note:**

> Homage to "The Snow Queen." Thank you, Hans.


End file.
